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I have a little problem. I'm addicted to cookbooks, food writing, recipe collecting, and cooking. I have a lot of recipes waiting for me to try them, and ideas from articles, tv, and restaurants often lead to new dishes. I started losing track of what I've done. So now I'm taking photos and writing about what I've prepared—unless it's terrible in which case I forget it ever happened.

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Wednesday, November 4, 2009

I have two more tapas to continue the story from The New Spanish Table that I started other day. I would have loved to try the bacalao hash, but I haven’t found salt cod locally and will have to place an order online. The tuna-stuffed tomatoes and scallops with pistachio vinaigrette both sounded great too, but they’ll have to wait until our next tapas party. This time, I was determined to stuff some piquillo peppers, and try the black olive, anchovy, and caper spread. I was certain I had purchased piquillo peppers at my usual location of Central Market before, but of course, when I needed them this time they weren’t there. I called around and found they did have the lovelies at the south location of Central Market, so they were mine in the end. In the book, piquillos are described as “the caviar of capsicums.” The roasted, flat-packed peppers are mostly sweet with a little earthiness, and their small size makes them perfect for stuffing just a bite or two.

The stuffed piquillo recipe in the book is found under the title veal-stuffed piquillo peppers. In the intro to that recipe, von Bremzen explains that the classic version usually involves a stuffing of seafood with bechamel sauce, and she suggests alternate ideas instead of veal. I went the seafood route and made a shrimp stuffing. I chopped some shrimp, sauteed them in olive oil with a little chopped garlic, and then added a bechamel. Once cool, that mixture was stuffed into the piquillos, and the peppers were chilled in the refrigerator to set. Meanwhile, a sauce was made by sauteing finely chopped onion and garlic in olive oil, and to that, chopped piquillos and grated tomato were added. I’d never grated a tomato before, but you simply cut it in half, grate it on a box grater, and discard the skin. After the sauce with the tomato added had reduced, sweet and hot paprika and white wine were added. Last, a little cream enriched the sauce. Some of this sauce went into the bottom of a baking dish, the stuffed peppers were placed on top, and the remaining sauce was poured over the peppers. I should explain, an optional step in this recipe is to bread and fry the stuffed piquillos just before placing them in the baking dish with the sauce. I skipped that option and baked the naked, stuffed peppers in the sauce until warm. These little guys were delightful with chunks of shrimp in the smooth bechamel and the paprika and cream in the sauce. This was a plate and fork kind of tapa, and it was hands-down our favorite if we had to pick only one.

The olive spread was next. I already have a favorite black olive tapenade, but I wanted to try this one just to see how it compared. I was intrigued by the use of anchovy and a hard-cooked egg yolk here. The entire mixture included black olives, anchovies, capers, garlic, one cooked egg yolk, rum, yes rum, mustard, and olive oil. This was a rich and flavorful olive spread and the anchovies and rum gave it spunk. I like a good bit of parsley in an olive spread, so I sprinkled some on top. I already declared the stuffed piquillos our favorite item of the night, but there were no disappointments here. I’ll be making all of these again, and from now on whether I’m making this olive spread or my old stand-by, it will have some rum in it.

Mmm, bacalao is one of my favorite things. I had it raw (reconstituted, though) with olive oil and garlic in Barcelona. Sharon didn't like it in that form much, though. I'm surprised you haven't found it there, though. The HEB at Parmer and McNeil sold it in wooden boxes usually near the refrigerated crab and such. Why they refrigerated it I don't know, I thought the salt took care of that? But then, I used to be freaked out that the grocery stores here shelved the eggs next to the bread.

Wish we had a good tapas place around here! So I don't have to make them, LOL, but your stuffed peppers look divine...actually everything you make my dear looks great, especially the caramel I just saw below!

Are these just going to get better and better as we go along?? I love the combination of red pepper and shrimp combo- but am not crazy for anchovies- although often you really can't taste them. Maybe the rum covers the flavor? ;)

I have a jar of piquillo peppers and now I know what to do with them! (I suppose I shouldn't buy items without having a plan of action first). I've heard so much about Central Market - it sounds like a gourmand's dream. I hope you'll have another tapas party soon so we can see the bacaloa hash and tuna-stuffed tomatoes!